The incident was down to a problem with the Altea Amadeus booking system, which product is used by numerous airlines around the world, including Air France, Lufthansa and Southwest Airlines for checking in passengers.

Gatwick Airport said a few airlines that operate there were affected but the outage lasted only a few minutes.

One passenger wrote: "If your entire system is down at REAGAN airport in DC, does that mean the planes aren’t leaving on time?"

Althea Campbell added that all systems were down at OR Tambo International in Gauteng, South Africa.

It was also reported that the entire check-in system at Singapore's Changi Airport, one of the largest transportation hubs in Southeast Asia, was affected by the glitch.

The company told Sun Online that the issue had no connection whatsoever to customer data and was not being regarded as a security incident.

A spokesman for Spanish tech firm Amadeus said: "The incident was related to our internal infrastructure.

"It was triggered by an issue in a faulty switch during network maintenance - the incident was not related to any security issue.

"As a result of the incident, customers experienced disruption to certain services.

"Amadeus technical teams took immediate action to identify the cause of the issue and restore services as quickly as possible.

"Amadeus regrets any inconvenience caused to customers."

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A scene at Gatwick Airport after the system crashedCredit: @JerryGhandi / Twitter

Frankfurt airport operator Fraport said on Twitter that Germany's largest carrier Lufthansa and partner airlines had been hit by the problem for around 30 minutes in the morning, which prevented bags being checked in - but said the issue had been resolved.

IT expert Tyrone Kennedy posted: "Systems down in Gatwick just hope it's not another #wannacry can't check in at the mo."

In May more than 200,000 victims across 150 countries were infected by malicious software known as WannaCry.

Last month it was reported that British Airways' IT systems crashed for the seventh time in just over a year.